Conventional fingerprint sensing solutions are available and deployed in consumer products, such as smartphones and other type of mobile devices. Common fingerprint sensor technologies generally rely on (1) a sensor and (2) a processing element. When the sensor is turned on, the sensor can take or can direct the device to take an image, which is digitized (e.g., level of brightness is encoded into a digital format), and send the image to the processing element. The processing element can compare the image content to an existing database of recorded images in order to find a match to a pre-recorded fingerprint, for example. Yet, finger print sensors typically consume substantial amount of power (e.g., hundreds of μWatts to several mWatts) and, therefore, cannot be turned on continuously to prevent draining a device's battery too rapidly.